Methods for Improving Anaerobic Digestion Yields

As shown in Sect. 2, many parameters influence the performance of a MSW anaerobic digester. However, the yields of the process are mainly related with the biomass characteristics, the enzymatic activity and the physical characteristics of the substrate, which manifest themselves through three measurable parameters: methanogenic activity, biodegradability and solubilisation rate [27]. Therefore, enhancing the AD process performance can be done through the analysis and optimization of one or more of those three parameters. To be specific, two options are currently available: (1) improve the AD operating conditions and (2) pre­treatments that favour waste biodegradability and solubilisation rate. Moreover, a completely different approach to improve the yield of the AD is the introduction of a co-sustrate, an option that has gained momentum in the last years.